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Embedded World 2018 trade fair will take place on on take place on February 27 – March 1 in Nuremberg, Germany, and we’re starting to see some company announce new products and solutions for the embedded market.

STMicro has just announced their showcase their very first cellular development kits at the event, based on a display-less variant on their 32L496GDISCOVERY Discovery board with cellular add-on boards:

Free software libraries and examples for the board will be available in STM32Cube package – soon including X-CUBE-CELLULAR software expansion packs – , and as usual, STM32 DISCOVERY boards are also supported by IAR, Keil and GCC-based IDEs, as well as Arm Mbed.

Each kit will come with an EMnify SIM card, specially designed for IoT applications and with a global reach of 133 countries. The SIM card can be managed from a dashboard, and a free 3-month trial data plan of 90 days will also included with the discovery kits. So it looks to be a competitor of Hologram SIM card, which I’ve recently been using in a Raspberry Pi 3G quick start guide.

Developers who are not familiar with C language will be able to run JavaScript scripts thanks to Espruino JavaScript interpreter for STM32 and through the Espruino Chrome Web IDE. The company has also partnered with cloud services providers with their own strengths:

Grovestreams’ analytics capabilities can help bringing decision-making mechanisms to any software

Exosite for industrial and enterprise systems

AVSystem for M2M applications

Aimagin for scientific application with its MATLAB analytics

Ubidots for application building

All those providers offer a free trial account, and extras may be offer to users of either Discovery kit. Both kits are sampling now, and should be available for purchase in Q2 2018 at a currently undisclosed price. Visit P-L496G-CELL01 product page for more details, as the company has yet to setup a page for P-L496G-CELL02 kit.

Earlier this summer, the Bluetooth SIG announced Bluetooth Mesh, which supports many-to-many (m:m) device communications for up 32,767 unicast addresses per mesh network (in theory), and is compatible with Bluetooth 4.0 or greater hardware. Several companies immediately unveiled Bluetooth Mesh SDK at the time including Qualcomm, Nordic Semi, and Silicon Labs.

ST Micro has now unveiled their own BlueNRG-MESH SDK which the company claims is “the market’s only three-part SDK that provides two app developer packages for Android and iOS, and the embedded-development software for building smart objects such as light fittings and sensors”.

Sadly, details about the SDK are near inexistent now, except – as one would expect – BlueNRG-MESH SDK will work with ST BlueNRG Bluetooth low energy wireless network processor based on an ARM Cortex M0 core, and corresponding development kits. [Update: STSW-BNRG-Mesh page has many more details about the SDK including the architecture diagram below.

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The solution was showcased at Bluetooth Asia in Shenzhen last week, with some selected customers already working with the SDK, before the public release scheduled for Q4 2017.

STMicro has launched a new 8-bit micro-controller that sells for $0.20 per unit in 10k quantities, a price not too far from the one of cheapest MCU, especially considering it comes with flash. STM8S001J3 is also the first STM8 MCU offered in 8-pin package (SO8N), and should compete with some of the Microchip Attiny or PIC12F series micro-controllers.

STM8S001J3 can be programmed with free (of charge) development tools such as Cosmic compiler, STM8CubeMX, Standard Peripheral Library and STVD IDE. You’ll find those tools, hardware and software documentation and way to purchase samples in the product page.

STMicro has recently introduced B-L475E-IOT01A Discovery kit powered by STM32L4 Cortex-M4 and targeting IoT nodes with a choice of connectivity options including WiFi, Bluetooth LE, NFC, and sub-GHZ RF at 868 or 915 MHz, as well as a long list of various environmental sensors.

The board supports ARM mbed online compiler, but can also be programmed using IDEs such as IAR, Keil, and GCC-based IDEs. STMicro also provides HAL libraries and code samples as part of the STM32Cube Package, as well as X-CUBE-AWS expansion software to connect to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT platform.

You’ll find documentation, hardware design files, software, and tools on the product page, where you’ll also be able to purchase the board for $51.94 with either a 868 or 915 MHz RF module.

Software development can be done through a sets of APIs based on the STM32Cube Hardware Abstraction Layer and middleware components, including the STM32 Open Development Environment. The module is supported by Open Software eXpansion Libraries, namely Open.MEMS, Open.RF, and Open.AUDIO, with various example programs allowing you to get started. Several third-party embedded sensing and voice-processing projects also support the module. The module also comes pre-loaded with BLUEMICROSYSTEM2 firmware, and can be controlled with “ST BlueMS” app found on Apple Store and Google Play.

But the best way to get started is with SensorTile kit including SensorTile core module and:

I could not find a price for SensorTile core module, but STEVAL-STLKT01V1 SensorTile kit can be purchased for $80.85 directly on STMicro website or their distributors. Visit SensorTile kit’s product page for further information include hardware design files, quick start guide, software and firmware downloads, purchase links, and more.

Frosted, which stands for “Free Operating Systems for Tiny Embedded Devices”, is an OS with a POSIX-compliant system call API, borrowing the Linux kernel kconfig for configuration, and currently supporting ARM Cortex M0,M3,M4, and M7 MCU including Texas Instruments Stellaris LM3S, STMicro STM32F4/F7, and NXP LPC17XX micro-controllers. The developers are focusing on IoT applications, as well as porting retro-games such as Doom.

The Wiki explains how to build and run the OS on either Qemu (in a Linux computer) used LM3S target, or an STM32F4 Cortex -M4 or STM32F7 Cortex-M7 board. The team also uploaded showing a video of Doom (fdoom) running on STM32F7 board, and possibly adapted from stm32doom port.

If you are interested in joining the project you can contact the developers on #frosted IRC channel, or use Github’s issues tab to report bugs and/or new features requests. There’s also a webpage here.

STMicroelectronics introduiced its STM32F7 ARM Cortex M7 micro-controller family in 2014, and they released a $49 STM32F746G discovery board later in 2015. The company has now launched two new low cost development boards with the $23 STM32 Nucleo-144 board based on STM32F767 MCU, and a $79 Discovery Kit powered by STM32F746 MCU with TFT-LCD and MIPI-DSI support.

Power Over Ethernet based on IEEE 802.3af (Powered Device, 48V to 5V, 3W)

Power supply output for external applications: 3.3 V or 5 V

Click to Enlarge

The company provide libraries and examples part of the STM32Cube package, and the board is also supported by various integrated development environments: Keil MDK-ARM, IAR EWARM, and GCC-based IDEs (free AC6: SW4STM32, Atollic TrueSTUDIO, …) allowing development in Linux or Windows operating systems. Like other STMicro boards, STM32F769I-DISCO board is open source hardware, and you can find the hardware design files, as well as software document on the product page, where you’ll also find links to purchase the board.